134
Jalcques Masson
Cabin Made in Paris Takes Shape Nine Feet Deep in the Icecap
When assembled, the shack contained dining room, kitchen, bunks, and laboratories. Insulated walls about
two inches thick held heat like three feet of brick. Snow quickly buried the completed cabin (opposite).
When we arrived, Ichac greeted me with,
"Come in, Pev, the hot water is ready."
That
meant volumes-a good hot meal, rest, and
blessed warmth.
We had been on the trail for days and
days, fleeing the thaw without an hour's rest.
And now, at long last, we could rest awhile,
we thought, the snow around us being hard
as concrete, the weather fine, and the fore
cast good. We slept.
But someone woke me; I did not know
whether it was 3 or 30 hours later.
"Victor," he said, "come on out and see for
yourself. The foehn has caught up with us."
Then the whole thing started all over again,
but, in a way, worse this time. The cater
pillar treads began to break, and some of the
sleds had to be left behind for the second
group to pick up when they eventually came
through.
We established Camp V and finally Camp
VI, at an altitude of about 5,200 feet, some
55 miles from Camp III at the edge of the
icecap. Now at last we were safe from
the thaw.
From here on, toward the east, stretched
a white flat desert of snow without the small
est landmark, the slightest wrinkle, to give
us even the faintest sign that we were still on
earth. About 200 miles ahead, and some
4,600 feet higher, lay the site of our Central
Icecap Station, as nearly as possible the same
spot where three men of the Wegener expe
dition-Dr. Johannes Georgi, Dr. Fritz
Loewe, and Dr. Ernst Sorge-had spent six
months in their snow hole in 1930-31.
Trapped in a Glacial Lake
But once again we had no time to lose.
We knew that what we called "summer" on
the icecap would be over around August 15
-a month and a half from now.
Meanwhile, far behind us, the second
group, under chief geodesist Jean Neviere,
was bringing the rest of our equipment. A
huge glacial lake formed around them and
stopped them for a week, the water getting
as high as the upper part of the tracks; they
passed from one weasel to another on planks,
like people in a flood.
Bucking far worse conditions than we,
they did not pass the marginal zone until